The Politics Thread 2018

Re: The Politics Thread 2018

Dr Zaius wrote:I loathe both parties at the moment. Neither are fit to govern in my opinion. Clean them out and start from scratch.

Herd them all into a Colleseum and only 1 walks out alive. I've got money on Bob 'crazy eyes' Katter.

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I would genuinely be supportive of that in place of the 2019 election.

Not as an ongoing thing, but just to strip the entire parliament out for a sitting. We can live under a strongman dictator for 3 years to get some hard decisions made, then return to our cuddly, dysfunctional democracy from there.

Re: The Politics Thread 2018

Re: The Politics Thread 2018

Posted: December 22, 2018, 7:12 am

by Dr Zaius

I propose a Fortnite style showdown. All sitting members drop from the sky in a bus, armed to the teeth. Last one standing becomes PM. I might not agree with my politics but they will have earned my respect.

- Climate/Energy plan
I am not sure what australia needs is more expensive energy nor am I convinced that this will have a material impact on climate change. That said, I agree that environmental concerns are a massive massive issue something that has never really been a strong point for the coalition.

The double whammy is that having no policy is contributing to higher prices in itself through uncertainty. Might as well have the higher prices be contributing to something beneficial. The material impact on climate change is:
- Research, investment and development of clean technologies. If we get it right then the rest of the world is going to buy/license our ideas and expertise. Wouldn't it be nice to develop Australian industries beyond digging holes, selling each other houses and coffee?
- Cleaner air locally
- Actually being a decent global citizen that is helping to solve the problem instead of make it worse. All countries need to pull their fingers out and stop pointing them at other people to solve the problem before their own backyard is in order.

All this whinging about paying a little more now is going to cost our children and grandchildren a fortune down the track. It's the height of selfishness.

P.S. Not being a strong point for the coalition is kind of my point. Thanks for agreeing.

House prices in sydney are tanking some stuff is down 20% from 6 months to a year a go. The market sent house prices down and then the market combined with institutional intervention over lending standards and state govt intervention of forieghn investment and stamp duty have tanked the market.

Please go speak to your real estate agent or builder friends and ask them how much more the market needs to tank or how much we need labor in to tank the property market further. TBH I think the imminent threat of labor coming in is already been priced into the market.

Why is the market tanking now? Because the government allowed the bubble to grow unnecessarily over the past 5 years. Even with this drop housing is still very expensive. You don't seem to have actually made any points here about how the government did handle this well?

LOL, this is a winner, I live in a safe seat so I wont have it for a year or two by which time I will probably be on equivalent wifi where the rest of the world is moving.

If we needed anything is upgraded / more cables to overseas market to help our gamers improve their ping against overseas competition.. but really the NBN yay.

FTR I was all for the NBN when it came out, but hindsight being what it is... I would dump 50 billion in far more different directions or just not borrow it and lessen the tax burden or borrowings. I will give the NBN though I still rate it above the current destruction of the city we are doing with the tram line.

Got any references on the rest of the world moving to wifi? Anything to back your claim that what we need is an overseas cable upgrade?

This was another opportunity to build infrastructure for economy growth and the government **** it up. Labor contributed to **** it up with the stupidest rollout schedule in history.

I have googled a word copy of a more updated one which shows $10B deficit last year which is a dramatic improvement on where we have been and then improving estimates. Oddly enough it appears the govt did better then estimated.

I found this one to be a good graph of showing when governments spend more money then they have.

You will notice a few things:-

The coalition have been pretty garbage over the past 5-6 years, although they certainly havent been worse then labor I think a fair assessment would be that they reached peak bad with labor and then started reigning it in. But again no business would certainly trumpet the coalitions results as a great result.

Labors six years before that was just horrendous, when you look at what was happening before they got in. Their spending jumped from 271B to 316B yes thats billion with a B, in one year (45B and thenup 20B the next year). As for blaming the global economy govt receipts or sales only dropped $2b and then $b the next year by the time the labor rot had really crept in.

To give Labor a bit of credit, in their final year in power they did manage to decrease spending by 4B but that was after seeing govt spending go from 271B to 371B in just four years.

The Coalition in comparison havent been sounds economic managers by any sense of the word, and imo a sound economic manager in a business sense spends less money then they bring in, or at the very least ends up about even over the life of there term, any other business would go broke. Similar to labor they have a shocking first year with a blame it on the old govt trick blowing out spending by 367B to 406B a whopping 39B increase, however after they tend to reign in the increases in spending to 6b increase and 13b increase the next year. Unlike Labor they do not have a year where they can say that they actualy decreased spending year on year. Though I have to wonder how much they may have fudged there figures to make there first year look bad, blame it on labor which actually was a lot to do with bringing back spending from labors last year or bringing forward stuff from there second year.

Eitherway its pretty clear that although the coalition have been bad they have clearly been better then the ALP.

Then you look at the map historically:-
Pretty good surplus after surplus in the howard years

90-97 all look pretty bad though this looks to me more due to a drop in tax revenue over 90-92 and not really recovering, you can hardly say keating / hawke spent worse then howard as spending seemed to increase at a relatively consistent rate, except to say the govt appeared to be much better from 94-97 in terms of not increasing their spending then 90-93.

Which brings us to labors glory days per the budget 87 - 90 Labor actually managed to deliver three surpluses, 2 of which while the economy was shrinking, which puts balls to the idea that a govt must necessary waste money when the economy is on a downturn. Labor managed to do the exact opposite.

83-87 not labors glory years, they manage to turn a 300m surplus into a 3b deficit in there first year. At that time 3B is of a 48B total spend so about 6% of their total budget not quite as horrendous as what we have seen recently but still pretty **** then growing that spending pie by a little under 10% year on year, not glory days at all.

From 75 - 83 you have 3 successive coalition govts and on any analysis they were garbage (far worse then the labor party to come). They inherited a surplus budget and ran a bunch of deficits with growing spending in every single year. Credit to them they delivered a surplus on their last year. Though I am always suspicious of the numbers in a govts first and last year in govt.

72-75 you have the whitlam years. Which despite free uni, were all positive years. credit to labor. It must be said that spending did grow massively, but then so did the taxes collected.

70-72 you have coalition years, john gorton, seemingly less spending growth, but similar to the whitlam year all surpluses with spending and income moving up at a similar pace.

Then there is no more data.

Re: The Politics Thread 2018

Posted: December 22, 2018, 4:26 pm

by papabear

Now I was only born in 84, so a lot of the above is just a basic analysis of the data.

In conclusion, there is no doubt that spending seems to grow less under coalition govts then it does under labor, just looking at the numbers the payments figures tend to increase more on a percentage basis when labor is in power.

Receipts are dependent on the strength of the economy. As a tax power not living off the teet of the govt any tax is a bad tax. The question is which ones are more evil.

I also think people underestimate our govt debt problem, whilst its true that compared to most major OECD countries our govt debt to GDP ratio is lower germany is at 65%, france 97%, italy 132% , US a little under 100%. These countries have always, always had high govt debt for ages with the bar not moving much in any given year or over any time period.

Since 2008 over the last 10-11 years we have gone from 0% - 19% that is massive growth, compare us to asian countries who are all in net surplus and we are a laughing stock in how we manage our moneys. What is worrying for me, is that we are moving towards the path of economies that are tanking and more and more reliant on govt spending, with govts with less abilities to spend then on private enterprise to thrive and pay taxes, which I refer to private enterprise I refer to actual private enterprise that do or create things and sell things to buyers that arent govts.

When looking at the bottom line a few questions come to mind:-
- What happened in 2008 - GFC and Labor came to power, how responsible was either one for the current state of play. Well had tax receipts not gone backwards for 2 years and stayed the same you only have 12B say they grow another 2% instead thats another 4B a year so an increase of 20B total, so we are back 180B at best with a good economy under labor instead of 200B. Quite frankly, blaming GFS is a big fat furphy. It was all labors doing.

What happened under the coalition.
- For whatever reason abbott had one good budget he amended and got pillored by hippies in the media for. He then became a lefty bitch on the economy whilst staying starkly conservative on social issues. You cant blame labor for continuing to increase your spending like a drunken sailor. There used to be sectors in the economy where private enterprise would tend to get paid better then your public servant counterparts. I think that is completely gone now unless at the top levels. Which to be frank should make it very easy for the govt to negotiate there wage bill, good luck public servants on getting a better deal in private enterprise against people who have been working harder then you there whole career for the most part on less.

But they didnt.

- Morrisons budgets have been slightly better (still bad), not enough better to warrant voting for the coalition on the economy, but certainly not bad enough that if you are voting on the budget or the economy you are moron if you vote labor.

Re: The Politics Thread 2018

I propose a Fortnite style showdown. All sitting members drop from the sky in a bus, armed to the teeth. Last one standing becomes PM. I might not agree with my politics but they will have earned my respect.

I... i just cant sign off on this
It's made for the far right, the Nats and Tony Abbott's of the world.
We can get to those clowns all on our own...

I have always felt like the only true democratic and fair way to decide elections is to have Smokin' Joe Hockey and Kimmy Beasley hit a buffet table and the man who eats most, wins.

Re: The Politics Thread 2018

Posted: December 22, 2018, 7:43 pm

by Dr Zaius

Re: The Politics Thread 2018

Posted: December 22, 2018, 8:22 pm

by PigRickman

Zaius is speaking my language.
Its the only true way

ill accept an amendment that says the winner of the eat off declares a PM as a 2 year probationary period, and all other sitting members are sent to the slaughter house. Because lord knows none of these ***** are fit to lead.

Re: The Politics Thread 2018

Anyone think this guy can't get enough votes in QLD to win a Senate seat?

Re: The Politics Thread 2018

Posted: January 10, 2019, 9:45 pm

by Sterlk

There's a fair bit of far-right support in QLD. Last election One Nation got about 9% of Senate first preferences there, which is more than double any other state. If there's anywhere far-right figures can get elected, its probably QLD.

Last time around he was elected from the One Nation ticket though; which he won't be on this time around as they fell out. It's pretty hard to get elected as an independent in the Senate, unless you're a big-name like Nick Xenophon.

Antony Green's verdict:

Senator Anning’s term finishes on June 30 and he will never sit again.

Re: The Politics Thread 2018

There's a fair bit of far-right support in QLD. Last election One Nation got about 9% of Senate first preferences there, which is more than double any other state. If there's anywhere far-right figures can get elected, its probably QLD.

Last time around he was elected from the One Nation ticket though; which he won't be on this time around as they fell out. It's pretty hard to get elected as an independent in the Senate, unless you're a big-name like Nick Xenophon.

Antony Green's verdict:

Senator Anning’s term finishes on June 30 and he will never sit again.

He's pushing **** up hill, but you never know. Queensland has a history of electing crack pots.

Re: The Politics Thread 2018

Posted: January 23, 2019, 2:34 pm

by Sterlk

Surprised this thread has been so quiet for the past few weeks, there's a fair bit going on.

Re: The Politics Thread 2018

Posted: January 23, 2019, 4:38 pm

by gergreg

If and when Labor wins this thread will become much more active again.

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Re: The Politics Thread 2018

Posted: January 23, 2019, 4:54 pm

by Sterlk

Well here's something:

May 18 everybody, mark the date.

Meanwhile, new clues emerged confirming May 18 as the almost-certain election date, with the Liberal Party reserving space that evening at its favoured election-night hotel in Sydney.

Re: The Politics Thread 2018

Posted: January 23, 2019, 4:54 pm

by -TW-

Sterlk wrote:Surprised this thread has been so quiet for the past few weeks, there's a fair bit going on.

I've managed to ignore most of it tbh

Re: The Politics Thread 2018

Posted: January 23, 2019, 5:14 pm

by gergreg

Sterlk wrote:Surprised this thread has been so quiet for the past few weeks, there's a fair bit going on.

Actually there has been a constant stream of baffling decisions/comments/actions from the government for quite some time now.

Re: The Politics Thread 2018

Surprised this thread has been so quiet for the past few weeks, there's a fair bit going on.

I'm normally pretty engaged in politics, as an interested observer at Federal level, and as an annoying and self-interested meddler at local Council.

Honestly though, it's just so bloody awful at the moment in parliament that I've pretty much logged off. We're going to slide into a 4 month election campaign shortly, with a slow motion car crash transition from a nasty, incompetent LNP government into the worst Labor regime of the last hundred years, with a new ruling party made up entirely of former unionists and political staffers.

There's a very real chance that we'll have legislation passing from a lower house of chest beating faux class warriors into a senate controlled by a few right wing loons from the backblocks of the most ideologically hideous parts of Queensland.

Honestly, what is there to get excited about? Our political classes in Australia just sink to lower and more uninspiring depths.

The main issue though is that Schifty has been noticeably absent here, so the lack of hilarious but absurd left-wing dogma has left the place a little hollow for me. GEM hasn't posted an outraged emoticon in months, either, so there's nothing for me to get all indignant about.

Grim times for the Politics Thread.

Re: The Politics Thread 2018

Posted: January 24, 2019, 9:06 am

by Schifty

The PM's Dept photoshopped two left feet containing Dunlop volleys onto Morrison in a photo nobody would have ever paid attention to.

I think that sums up #Auspol right now.

Other than Katter being his usual homophobic self by now claiming homosexuality is a trend.

Re: The Politics Thread 2018

There's a very real chance that we'll have legislation passing from a lower house of chest beating faux class warriors into a senate controlled by a few right wing loons from the backblocks of the most ideologically hideous parts of Queensland.

For the 2016 double dissolution election, they did the whole senate (rather than the typical half), so the number of votes required to hit the quota and take a seat would've been much lower than it usually is. In the aftermath I recall the major parties passing something meaning those with the most votes would get six year terms, meaning all the minor players received three year terms... and it would be safe to predict a lot of those seats this time around will go to the major parties.

There will of course still be some minor party representation in the Senate. If Labor do go on to form government in the HoR, I've seen predictions that Labor and Greens together won't be enough for a majority in the Senate, so there'll likely be a crossbencher or two involved in things. One would think they'd be working with those closest to them on the political spectrum, though - I don't know much about the positions of the minor parties, though you'd have to think a deal would more likely be done with SA's Centre Alliance (who I'm assuming have centrist values), rather than anybody from the far-right.

Re: The Politics Thread 2018

Posted: January 25, 2019, 5:37 am

by T_R

We'll see - and you could well be right. I just have a niggling feeling that thebFraser Annings or this world might have another election or two in them yet.

Re: The Politics Thread 2018

Posted: January 25, 2019, 7:04 am

by gergreg

I've seen it suggested that Anning received 19 votes, any truth to that? Sometimes I think we get the politicians we deserve but we've crossed the tipping point. Nobody deserves somebody like Dutton, Anning etc

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Re: The Politics Thread 2018

Posted: January 25, 2019, 9:59 am

by T_R

It's very true. He was about 1000th on the One Nation ticket, and found his way into the Senate as a result of those above him resigning or being booted. With 19 first preference votes though, it's clear that he's very popular among a small group of close personal friends and blood relatives.

Post election, he's certainly building a following among my fellow redneck Queenslanders, and with One Nation a little on the nose up here I think he's a very good chance of scooping a decent share of the protest vote....before he inevitably forms some whacko party with his own name in the title - 'The Fraser Anning One United Australia Nation Party Alliance' or somesuch, imploding and disappearing into the obscurity of late night commentary gigs on Sky News.

Re: The Politics Thread 2018

Posted: January 25, 2019, 12:49 pm

by gergreg

T_R wrote:It's very true. He was about 1000th on the One Nation ticket, and found his way into the Senate as a result of those above him resigning or being booted. With 19 first preference votes though, it's clear that he's very popular among a small group of close personal friends and blood relatives.

Post election, he's certainly building a following among my fellow redneck Queenslanders, and with One Nation a little on the nose up here I think he's a very good chance of scooping a decent share of the protest vote....before he inevitably forms some whacko party with his own name in the title - 'The Fraser Anning One United Australia Nation Party Alliance' or somesuch, imploding and disappearing into the obscurity of late night commentary gigs on Sky News.

Don't worry you'll be frothing at the mouth at Origin time, along with GE, in no time.